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financial activities; activities involving penetration of government; narcotics (particularly heroin); financial and political institutions and organizations; and other areas significant to FBI counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations and national security.
    Saccher briefly explained the foreign targets of FBI operations and their possible counterparts in the United States. There were many, divided into primary, secondary, and “not significant” categories. We discussed a bit more, after which he praised my familiarity with the subject area and said he looked forward to my feedback and analysis.
    On the way to the elevator he remarked, “I’ve been bugging HQ to hire a real translator, someone competent. I’m sure you’ve already met the three sisters from hell down there. These crooks claimed proficiency in Turkish and talked the administrators into assigning them overtime projects in the language. It didn’t take me long to realize the shoddy work they produced, so I reported it to HQ and asked them to administer proficiency exams … HQ sends them notification asking them to go to HQ and submit to these tests, right? Guess what these crooks did? First they dragged their feet, and then they simply refused to take the test. Of course, they knew the uproar that would occur if they did! Can you believe this went on for two years? Man, am I glad you’re here.”
    I was flabbergasted. How could HQ not be able to demand that they take the tests and allow them to continue for two more years?
    He shook his head. “Just wait. There is so much shit going on down there; you’ll get to know all about it in no time…. Just watch your back and don’t get close to or involved with these people; keep your head down and keep your distance.”
    He asked me to call any time and to shoot for briefing sessions every few days at a minimum. I rode the elevator down with my head spinning.

    In the following weeks I had several counterterrorism assignments from different field offices, including New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Detroit and others. These were top priority cases with direct relevance to the 9/11 attacks. The FBI had a huge backlog of untranslated e-mails, tapes, letters and other documents. Part of my job involved going over these and related materials—some collected long before 9/11—to connect certain dots and possibly find more clues. Counterterrorism agents from around the country began to call me directly, begging me to expedite their projects: they depended on the translated documents and audios to make a case or drop it, to arrest or release a suspect.
    During this hectic period I also worked on my permanent counterintelligence projects involving Turkish targets in Saccher’s unit. Here I had to divide my time between new and real-time intelligence and those not yet translated from years earlier, some dating back to 1996. The LA field office also sent me several CDs of intelligence they wanted me to review.
    At once I began to realize the critical role played by language specialists in these investigations. In fact, I had come to see translators as the most important players. So much for boring clerical administrative work!
    Field agents, analysts, and other decision makers in FBI offices and HQ depend on translators for their investigations of foreign targets—which means that they need to be able to trust that the translated foreign intelligence received is thorough, accurate and unbiased. They have no way to double-check or assess information given to them by translators, and so must use it as a basis for taking action or not.
    If processed and transmitted in time, even one sentence of an intercepted communication can save thousands of lives. A piece of competently translated and analyzed intelligence can, for instance, lead to dismantling a network of deadly criminals.
    Imagine, for a moment, that a language specialist is listening to a verbal communication between two targets of an FBI